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Todorov's Biography & Bibliography

Biography

Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov (Bulgaria, 1939) comes from the Russian formalist tradition and has contributed to the development of literary structuralism. He has examined the notion of the symbol and redefined the fundamental concepts of semiotics, a field which he says derives from "symbolics", he says.

Todorov's two major works on semiotics are Theories of the Symbol (1982) [1977] and Symbolism and Interpretation (1982) [1978]. His theory defines the relationship between history, discourse and enunciation, and proposes a definition of the symbolism of language based on the distinction he makes between language and discourse. Todorov also defines the distinction between the sign and the symbol, which are based on a text's direct meaning and indirect content, respectively.

Todorov is currently a director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).